It is unfortunate to learn that about a week ago, Nintendo shut down another Pokemon fan project. Dubbed Pokemon Prism, this is the second fan project in recent times that was shut down by the company, with the earlier project being Pokemon Uranium. However the good news is that all might not be lost after all.According to a report from Kotaku, it seems that pirates have gotten their hands on a copy of Pokemon Prism and have decided to fly the flag of defiance in Nintendo’s face by releasing it on the internet. In a text file posted along with the original files on 4chan, the pirates revealed some additional information about themselves, namely that they are in no way affiliated with the original developers of the game, and that they are simply interested in seeing ROM hacks succeed.
As to whether or not Pokemon Prism will be updated, the pirates say, “Maybe, if we can distribute them somehow. The major issue is getting developers to help, though; we don’t have much experience with this particular programming language. We managed to figure out how to remove the original credits (to prevent anyone from being liable by us doing this) and that’s about it.”
They also add, “Regardless of Nintendo’s legal rights, we do believe that they are destroying their fans’ hard work for no reason and at no gain. Nintendo could have used this (and any other good ROM hack) as an opportunity to promote the Pokémon series in general. They don’t even have to do anything other than let the games live.” Obviously we won’t be sharing the link to the pirated files, but it’s out there if you want to look for it.